March 25, 2006

Aperture Trick #47 – Rotate Photos in Book Layouts

You CAN rotate photos in a book. When laying out the book, click the Edit Layout button, so that you can move the various elements on the page. Click the photo box that you want to rotate, then move your pointer to one of the corners of the selected photo box. The cursor will turn into a cross-hair. You can now do a free rotate of the box, setting it to any angle.

To rotate a picture WITHIN the photo box (while leaving the box itself unrotated), use the Straighten tool. Select the photo in the book (having clicked the Edit Content button), then click the “Show Viewer for this Browser” button (it’s the button just to the right of the sorting pop-up in the browser). This displays the currently selected photo from your book in a standard viewer. Now use the Straighten tool to rotate the image. Click the “Show Viewer for the Browser” button again to toggle back into the book layout and your photo will appear in its newly-rotated position in the book layout.